Texas Children’s hand surgeon and professor of surgery and pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine Dr. William Pederson was recently named president of the American Association for Hand Surgery (AAHS).
Pederson, a highly-regarded pediatric hand surgeon, joined Texas Children’s in January 2016, further expanding the highly-specialized, multidisciplinary care offered to children, adolescents and families who seek treatment at Texas Children’s.
Pederson’s clinical interests include the management of vascular problems in the upper extremity, nerve injury and repair including brachial plexus, Volkmann’s ischemic contracture, facial paralysis and microsurgical reconstruction of complex extremity defects.
A native Texan, he is an honors graduate of The University of Texas at Austin and received his medical degree from The University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas. He completed an internship and residency in surgery at The University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio. Pederson continued his medical education with training in plastic and reconstructive surgery at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina and was a Christine Kleinert Fellow in hand surgery in Louisville, Kentucky. Following this, he completed a one-year fellowship in microsurgery at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne, Australia.
With more than 1,300 members, the AAHS represents a diverse but cohesive mix of highly respected professionals working in all disciplines of hand surgery and hand therapy. Members include orthopedic surgeons, plastic surgeons, general surgeons, microsurgeons, hand therapists, nurses, and basic scientists from the United States, Canada, and many other countries around the world. AAHS is an inclusive organization that welcomes members from many disciplines who are interested in the care of the upper extremity.
AAHS was founded by a group of American and Canadian hand surgeons. The group received their training under Dr. Joseph L. Posch at the Grace Hospital in Detroit and shared a vision of forming an organization that would represent the interest of all surgeons practicing hand surgery. In 1970, that vision became a reality. The founding purpose of the American Association for Hand Surgery was to provide an educational forum to increase the professional expertise and knowledge of surgeons involved in hand surgery. Today, the association has expanded to include hand therapist and other health professionals who care for patients with hand and upper extremity problems.